MediaTakeout: Fear of a Black TMZ

Oh, Dayum!! The most intimidating man in hip-hop isn't Jay-Z, or Weezy, or some hustling exec at Interscope. It's a former lawyer named Fred, whose comically sleazy gossip website MediaTakeout has been denounced onstage by Kanye, slapped with a cease-and-desist order by Ochocinco, and bookmarked by everyone in the world of black entertainment. Because if MediaTakeout sets its sights on you, whatever it publishes probably isn't true, but it does mean you've made it in the game

If you want to know how a surreal kernel of innuendo can travel from the floor of an NBA game to the front page of the New York Daily News and beyond, all without a single person actually knowing what it means, or whether it's even true, consider the tale of Carmelo Anthony's wife La La, Kevin Garnett, the apparently erotic flavor of Honey Nut Cheerios, and the vast, confusing world of black Internet gossip.

Maybe you follow the NBA, or the New York tabloids; maybe you don't. So here's some context. In January, in the middle of a contentious Knicks-Celtics game, Anthony basically went berserk on Garnett. Garnett had said something to him on the floor, though the particulars were not initially clear. Whatever it was led Anthony to attempt a siege of the Celtics team bus after the game. It took five cops, an entire contingent of Madison Square Garden security, and Knicks head coach Mike Woodson to get Melo to stand down.

A couple days later, the New York Daily News put La La on the front page, next to a giant, suggestive circle of breakfast cereal: Garnett, the tabloid alleged, had told Anthony that his wife tasted "like Honey Nut Cheerios." Garnett was not referring to her mouth. And so the first great sports tabloid story of 2013 was born.

Only problem was, according to La La—meaning, according to her husband—Garnett never actually said it. Which, in a way, made the Daily News story more ominous: Something that specific, that suggestive, had to come from somewhere. But where?

So today La La has come to the Soho Grand Hotel on a chilly afternoon in February to talk with the one person who she thinks might know the answer: Fred Mwangaguhunga, the 39-year-old founder and editor of the celebrity-gossip site MediaTakeout. Fred isn't lunch buddies with most of the people MediaTakeout writes about—he has even, on occasion, been seen with a bodyguard, to protect him from the people MediaTakeout writes about—but he is friends with La La. She's the rare celebrity to get mostly favorable coverage on his site. Which, in the vernacular of MediaTakeout, tends to look something like:

We've Got A DIFFICULT Question For All You DUDES Out There... Which Side Of Carmelo Anthony's Wife LALA Do You Prefer... The FACE... Or The AZZ!!!

Or, more topically, vis-à-vis the subject of our lunch today: DAYUMMMMMMMM!!! Carmelo Anthony's Wife Was Out Last Night Looking SPECTACULAR... After Seeing Them TIDDAYS... Now We Know Why He Was Willing TO FIGHT FOR HER!!!

For what it's worth, La La is indeed looking SPECTACULAR, in a complicated white-mesh-and-snakeskin sweatshirt, pristine white pants, and pink talon nails.The FACE/AZZ headline, which will go up on MediaTakeout tomorrow morning, will be accompanied by a picture of her in this very same outfit, outside this very same hotel. La La knows the deal, saw the cameras, even joked to Fred about them when she got inside: "You call paparazzi on me?"

La La is aware that MediaTakeout can be the enemy of both good taste and public figures such as herself. But she also knows that the site is where nearly every grimy rumor sluices down to, that Fred's sources are myriad and omnipresent—managers and publicists, video vixens and hangers-on, aggrieved hairdressers and under-tipped waitresses—and that if there's anything worth knowing about her husband that she doesn't already know, Fred is the person who will know it.

So, she asks: "How'd they come up with Honey Nut Cheerios?"

Fred is thin, tall, and today is wearing a denim shirt and Jordans; with his black-framed glasses and neatly shaved head, he still looks like the Ivy League graduate that he is. He tells La La that the same anonymous source who approached the Daily News, peddling the Cheerios rumor, had approached him first. "I didn't believe that shit," he explains.

Fred doesn't know much more than that about where the rumor came from. Which is okay, because it turns out La La has a second, more important question that Fred does know the answer to. She doesn't really care about Honey Nut Cheerios. The cereal was a pretext. What she really wants to know is: Has Fred heard about anything involving Melo and women who are not named La La Anthony? Tabloid stories have a way of begetting more tabloid stories. Groupies, girls, that kind of thing—just look at Tiger Woods, whose one VIP hostess quickly turned into a dozen after news of his infidelities went public. Once she's on the front page of the Daily News next to a stranger's quote about her vagina, La La says, "that's when people feel like, 'That's my chance to start something up or to make something up.' "

Fred nods sympathetically. On this subject, he says, he can help: "No bullshit came out."

"Good," La La says, as somewhere far away from here a chill shoots down the spine of the NBA's reigning scoring champion. "Because I'll cut a motherfucker's dick off, okay? And that'll be the next story."

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MediaTakeout is often referred to as "the black TMZ," but it's hard to imagine even TMZ running a story about any human, black or white, with the headline, "SEXY OR GAY??? R&B Singer Miguel Makes Simulated Booty Love To An Invisible Person!!!" The site is hugely popular—viewed by around 16 million people each month—and it does indeed specialize in coverage of African-American celebrities. Athletes, rappers, radio personalities, actors, politicians, reality-television stars; anyone black and famous, up to and including our president: "We've Got PICS Of That WOMAN That PRESIDENT OBAMA Was Flirting With... And Look At The BODY LANGUAGE Between The Two Of Them... Michelle It's Time To STEP IN AND GET YOUR MAN!!!!"